Yesterday, while Robert and I soaked up the sun at a city park with lots of water-based fun, I had this conversation with a four-year-old girl:

She: Um, did they make this park?Me: Did who make this park?She: You know, the people.Me: Which people?She: The people. You know, the people who made this park.Me: Yes. Yes they did.She: I think they did a very good job.

I cannot wait until I can have dialogues like this on a regular basis.

On the topic of that water-riffic park (which sits on a pier over the Hudson River), a few of us parents noticed recently that it wasn’t completely fenced in. A secure barrier ringed about two-thirds of the play area, but a wayward child could easily approach the railing, slip through the horizontal bars, and drop into the vile drink below.

On Thursday, though, we noticed that new police barricades had been erected to cordon off the dangerous area. It turns out that somebody alerted the "Shame On You" team at our local CBS station, and Arnold Diaz came down on the problem like a ton of bricks. Once again, the world is made just a little safer by cantankerous journalism.